Momo Arashima Steals the Sword of the Wind

Ages 8 to 12, Grades 3 to 7

A thrilling, funny middle-grade fantasy series about a girl who sets out to save her Shinto goddess mother—and the world—by facing down demons intent on bringing chaos. Perfect for fans of the Aru Shah and Fablehaven series.

All Momo wants for her twelfth birthday is an ordinary life—like everyone else's. At home, she has to take care of her absentminded widowed mother. At school, kids ridicule her for mixing up reality with the magical stories her mother used to tell her.

But then Momo’s mother falls gravely ill, and a death hag straight out of those childhood stories attacks Momo at the mall, where she’s rescued by a talking fox . . . and “ordinary” goes out the window. It turns out that Momo's mother is a banished Shinto goddess who used to protect a long-forgotten passageway to Yomi—a.k.a. the land of the dead. That passageway is now under attack, and countless evil spirits threaten to escape and wreak havoc across the earth.

Joined by Niko the fox and Danny—her former best friend turned popular jerk, whom she never planned to speak to again, much less save the world with—Momo must embrace her (definitely not "ordinary") identity as half human, half goddess to unlock her divine powers, save her mother’s life, and force the demons back to Yomi.

About the Author

Misa Sugiura’s ancestors include a poet, a priestess, a samurai, and a stowaway. She was born and raised in Chicagoland but eventually found her way to her true home in Northern California, where she lives and writes under a giant oak tree with her husband, two sons, and a cat named Mouse. Momo Arashima Steals the Sword of the Wind is her first middle-grade novel and was inspired by the gods and monsters of her parents’ home country, Japan. Misa is also the author of three young adult novels: the award-winning It’s Not Like It’s a Secret and the critically acclaimed This Time Will Be Different and Love & Other Natural Disasters. Her short stories have appeared in the New York Times and the anthology Come On In: 15 Stories of Immigration and Finding Home.

Author Residence: Santa Clara, California

Author Hometown: Chicago, Illinois